As is well known and understood, we presently live in an age where health consciousness and physical conditioning are becoming ever more important. Fitness centers and health spas seems to be opening up almost weekly in every large city and suburb. Promoting such activities as an indoor-running track, various weightlifting equipment, stationary bicycles and indoor swimming pools, amongst other equipments, such businesses welcome clients ranging from a typical housewife to the business person and, in general, to people of all ages.
Not only are these locations opening and thriving, but they have also tended to generate interest in exercise equipments that can be purchased for use at home or office. Thus, one need only look through the pages of a newspaper or magazine, or turn on the television, to see advertisements promoting this or another stationary bicycle, this-or-that treadmill, any one of a number of "tummy-flattening" exercise apparatus and untold numbers of brands and models of running shoes. Recognizing that not everyone lives or works near a health fitness center, and that not everyone is able to travel to a shopping district or mall to purchase these home equipments, the industry has expanded into "mail-order", so that no one is more than a telephone call or letter away from purchasing the various apparatus extolled, so as to themselves obtain the body attractively depicted in the various media advertisements. Of course, and at the same time, there is competing tug in this modern age to have everything done and accomplished as quickly as possible. Thus, not only do people want diets to be effective overnight, but they desire the exercise equipment that they use to be able to burn-off calories as quickly as possible, and to obtain the desired degrees of fitness with the least amount of effort possible. Appreciating that many of these equipments available are not readily transportable from place to place, the participants in these exercise programs are also desirous of being able to take their equipment with them--if only going to the office, but always when taking an out-of-town trip, be it on business or vacation. While that is easily accomplished with taking one's pair of running shoes in an attache case or overnight bag, the activity associated with "running" is essentially entirely an "aerobic" exercise, without providing any "resistance" activities which are associated with weight-lifting, weight-pulling, rowing, or that wide class of exercising where one works against a resistance force.